Tag Archives: Centrelink

It seemed to me that not only was I losing Izzy but all of my lifestyle as well. “Don’t worry about the business side of things” people said. That’s OK if you have money – but I don’t. We loved our lifestyle, Izzy and me. The children playing and the gardens growing. I was finding the thought of all of it being gone in one ‘fell swoop’ was rather difficult.

Today, Centrelink, courtesy a Gumbayngirr friend, sorted me onto full disability pension and a bereavement allowance so that now I can take time.

My son is here and doing for me all the little invisible things that could break me full on.

My daughter is getting a little respite at last with her babies.

Today I ,lunched at the home of my former in-laws – from 35 years ago. It anchored me in a shared lifetime of many dimensions.

Now I am tired. Money on the table in coins from the Buskers’ tin. Money to come in from Centrelink and $500 from the daughter of my cousin. For tyres.

Now – I feel his Spirit in the very air of this place. Up behind me in the Forest. I have poetry to feel for and sanctuary for a time.

I am setting out on this path of Grief. I refuse the maps people are trying to give me. I do not wish to be led to the places those maps would lead me – comfortable though they may appear. They are siren calls to me and I refuse them

I am about to wander with him in the Forests, away from the generic labels of this era. Tonight – I am happy – for a time. Rich in pleasures and memories. We pulled off one fine funeral, so we did.

“He is the intermediary between us, his audience, the living, and they, the dolls, the undead, who cannot live at all and yet who mimic the living in every detail since, though they cannot speak or weep, still they project those signals of signification we instantly recognize as language.” ― Angela Carter, Wayward Girls and Wicked Women

“Because we have viewed other animals through the myopic lens of our self-importance, we have misperceived who and what they are. Because we have repeated our ignorance, one to the other, we have mistaken it for knowledge.” Tom Regan